History is amazing.
NY Times October 14, 1864: “DEATH OF CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY”
http://www.nytimes.com/1864/10/14/news/death-chief-justice-taney-obituary-notice-proceedings-courts-honors-his-memory.html
“”Mr. TANEY took his seat on the Supreme Bench in January, 1837. His name will be chiefly associated with the famous decision in the case of “DRED SCOTT,” which has gained special prominence from its bearings on some of the most important political issues of the age. The decision itself was in accordance with the opinion of the majority of the court, and was merely to the effect that the Circuit Court of the United States for Missouri had no jurisdiction in the suit brought by the plaintiff in error, but the Chief Justice went out of his way to indulge in a long and entirely irrelevant dissertation about the estimate which he claimed our ancestors placed upon the negro, and the rights to which he was entitled. In the course of his remarks the Chief Justice took occasion to assert, that for more than a century previous to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, negroes, whether slave or free, had been regarded as “beings of an interior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect;” that consequently such persons were not included “people” in the general words of that instrument, and could not in any respect be considered as citizens; that the inhibition of slavery in the territories of the United States lying north of the line of 30 degrees and 30 minutes, known as the Missouri Compromise, was unconstitutional...””
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Maryland “Freak State” PING!
Attended a kids soccer game in Taneytown (pronounced ‘tinytown’) just a few weeks ago. I’ll have to go back and see if this guy has any tributes.
The final irony was that it wasn’t long that Lincoln joined Taney and over 650,000 other Americans.
Several years ago, I read an article is an issue of the Civil War Times Illustrated. The Article dealt with President Lincoln signing an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Taney). The Chief Justice was issuing writs of Habeas Corpus to Maryland legislators arrested but not charged by the Lincoln Administration. Lincoln was mad as hell with Taney for this. He signed the arrest warrant and told the magistrate to not act on it until Lincoln told him to do so. I do not recall the issue the article appeared in. Imagine the political fall out if the President had arrested the Chief Justice.
I think it’s a poor article which fails to highlight Taney’s judicial activism in striking down the Missouri compromise of 1820 as a superfluous expansion of his opinion on Dred- Scott. My understanding from reading Jaffe is that it was the first use of judicial review since Marbury vs. Madison.
No Chief Justice to date has come anywhere close to unseating John Marshall (1755-1835) as the greatest and most influential CJ ever on SCOTUS yet it was his death that opened the vacancy that Roger Taney filled. Taney's reputation, even before Dred Scott, suffers much by the comparison.
There used to be a USCGC called the Taney.
Not a happy camper.
The real story here is the passing of the 13th Amendment. Back in the day when the government was constrained.